


"Please Don't."

by CookieDoughMe



Category: Haven (TV)
Genre: LLF Comment Project, Multi, aether!Duke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-04-13
Packaged: 2019-04-04 02:53:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 9
Words: 13,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14010591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CookieDoughMe/pseuds/CookieDoughMe
Summary: For theHaven Crew prompt, "Please don't."Set in an alternative season five, where things have gone very, very wrong.Audrey is gone, and Mara is in full control of her body. Duke is lost to the aether that Mara and Croatoan have poured inside of him. Mara and the creature that looks like Duke decide to play with Nathan. Nathan does not have fun.This is about 10% plot, 90% smut, 110% angst and 0% fluff.-Now with added chapters! Smut and Angst levels continue unchanged, though there is now a little more plot. Chapters 2 - 7 continue in much the same way as Chapter 1, Chapters 8 & 9 are, if not exactly happy, at least less dark. It is a long and dank tunnel, but there is some daylight visible at the end.





	1. Chapter 1

He knows they're gone, but he still dreams about them sometimes. His sleep is invaded by memories of how things used to be, back when they shared his bed. Back when they were happy. Back when they were themselves.

Tonight is one of those nights. In his dream, Audrey’s soft blonde hair tickles his cheek as she bends down to kiss him. He feels the touch of her fingers as five points of brightness in the darkness of his Trouble. He watches eagerly as Duke’s hands make her moan. He runs his own hands carefully over Duke’s body, and is always slightly surprised by how much he likes it when Duke touches him, even though he has to watch to even know that he is.

In the dream Audrey and Duke smile warm smiles at each other before they kiss him, Audrey whispering sweet nothings in his ear as she pulls at his t-shirt. In the dream, Duke runs his hand down Nathan stomach and into his pants, pushing the fabric down his legs, his palms tight against Nathan's skin.

And that's what tells Nathan that something's wrong, because he shouldn't be able to feel that. He blinks his eyes open, sleepy in the half darkness of his bedroom. As he struggles to wake up, he realises the hands from his dream are following him into wakefulness (or was it the other way round?) and he blinks in confusion for a moment as the hands pull the last of the clothing from his skin and press their naked bodies to his.

“Audrey?” he begins, “Duke?” It seems like it must be them, but then also it can't be. Can it? Then they turn to look at him and as the light catches their faces more clearly he sees; Dukes eyes are all wrong, black and black, the harsh unreality of Croatoan’s control that has wiped away all evidence of the man he knew. And as for Audrey, her expression is all wrong; it isn't Audrey’s warm smile directed at him, but the harsh and callous grin that is Mara’s.

“Hello Nathan,” she purrs. “We missed you.”

“Get out of here,” Nathan tells her between gritted teeth.

“Aw baby!” she says affronted. “We just got here! We have so much fun planned. Don't we Duke?” she finishes.

“Always,” Duke purrs back at her.

Nathan tells himself again it isn't them. Mara at least goes by a different name; that’s something. But Duke is still Duke, even though he isn't. That is awful and it is hard, but seeing the two of them together is all kinds of difficult for Nathan. Reminding him as it does of what he has lost, reminding him he is alone, and of what he has to fight.

Mara stretches up and over him, pulling Duke into a long kiss right in front of Nathan's face. He closes his eyes but he can still hear them, still feel the warmth of their bodies. Mara pulls away, “hmmm, he is such a good kisser this boy. I could do that for hours. Well in fact I often do, but tonight is about you Nathan,” she says, and they both lie down either side of him again, pressing their bodies to his.

He can feel both of them; firm and soft and skin and warm and _here_ and though he wants to push them away, he knows that he wouldn't be able to fight them off. Not both of them at once, not with aether no doubt adding to their strength and providing them with a whole arsenal of Troubles to keep him in his place.

Mara runs her fingernails from his collarbone over his nipple, across his ribs and down to his hip, just the way that Audrey used to do. The pressure is just the same and it is so familiar it makes him whimper. He tries to pull away from her, but Duke’s body is in the way; he has nowhere to go. “Please don't,” he says to her, and Mara laughs. Her laugh is like her grin; merciless and vindictive she sounds nothing like Audrey.

He has hardly finished speaking when Duke bends his head to suck a warm wet kiss onto Nathan's other nipple. The unexpectedness of it makes Nathan gasp, and Mara laughs again. “We've given Duke immunity to your Trouble for the night. All those times you kissed him and wondered what it would feel like, now you get to find out.”

Nathan closes his eyes and shakes his head, “Please don't,” he says to Duke.

“Come on Nate,” Duke protests, charming and persuasive. “It's us, you know we can make you feel good. Even I know what you like, and she remembers Audrey _and_ Sarah, plus she's got hundreds of years of tricks up her sleeve. I know you always wondered what this felt like,” he finishes, and brings a hand to the far side of Nathan's head to hold him still while his kisses along his jaw towards his ear.

Nathan closes his eyes and stutters out another “Don't,” around a breath that catches in his throat. He feels Dukes lips on his earlobe, his tongue flicking over it, pushing behind to the soft skin where the back of his ear meets his head. Nathan moans in frustration and then in reluctant pleasure, because Duke knows how to use his tongue, and the effect of this is even more intense that Nathan had imagined when watching Audrey’s reaction to it.

And even as Duke keeps going, Mara brings her hand to his chest again, finding his nipple and stroking and twisting and gently scratching just hard enough to make him hiss. Then she brings her hand to his jaw, her and Duke holding him still between them, and kisses him so softly and gently he could almost believe it was Audrey in there. And that, he finds, only makes everything ten times worse.

Duke brings his tongue back to Nathan's other nipple and between the two of them, they hold him still as he tries to twist out of their grasp. Even so, his body reacts the way that bodies will tend to do, and Mara grins at him as she runs a finger up his erection.

“I see you missed us too,” she says.

Nathan shakes his head, “I miss _her_ ,” he says. “Never you.”

She scowls at that, annoyed. But then she wraps her fingers around his cock and runs her thumb over the head, secure in Audreys memories of the effect it will have on him. “It's all the same difference where sex is concerned,” she tells him. “I _know_ how to make you come, _I_ know how to make you beg. I know exactly what will bring you to the point of orgasm and _just_ what to do to keep you there for as long as I want. I know how to tease you until you can't take it any more, and who better to help me with that than Duke?”

“Please don't,” Nathan says again. He says it softly, with no expectation it will make them stop. Perhaps it is even exactly what they want him to say.

In any case, he says it again and again as between them they run their hands and their mouths over his trapped body. Sometimes they talk to him, sometimes they talk to each other. It's all lies, meaningless or otherwise, but one thing is self-evidently true; they know all the ways in which he likes to be touched. His body betrays him and he feels all of it as his breathing grows faster and shallower, his heart pumps ever harder and his hips jerk unthinking towards their touch.

He moans in frustration and desire, in anger and delight; fighting against his own pleasure, even as it's used as a weapon against him.

“Such a delightful sight,” Mara mutters as she drags a single finger slowly up his cock and watches his hips shift upwards after her, seeking more sensation once the touch is gone. “Speaking of which,” she adds and she brings a hand to Nathan's jaw to turn his head so that he faces towards Duke. “Duke,” she prompts. “Don't you want to find out what it's like to kiss him when he can feel you?”

Nathan tries to shake his head, starts to speak, but he can't move out of the way, and he only gets half way through Duke’s name before Duke’s lips are pressed to his. Duke kisses the way Nathan had always imagined he would; full and intense, searching and sensual. Nathan groans a small noise of protest in the back of his throat, but he can't move away. There is nowhere to go in any case, but also it's _Duke_ and he can _feel_ him and Nathan is running low on the desire for him to stop.

Duke pulls away to talk to him, but he is smart enough not to look him in the eyes, not to show Nathan the most visible evidence of his difference. He bends his head to Nathan's neck instead, and talks to him in between kisses as Mara returns her hand to his cock to stroke him slowly.

“Relax Nate, it's us. We know what you like. We know how to make you feel good. It must seem like forever since you felt anything at all, but we're here now to change that. We've got all night, hell we could keep touching you all week if you wanted, but we're definitely staying until morning. Remember on your birthday last year? We got you all revved up and then dragged it out for _hours_. Don't you want to feel like that again? Won't you let us make you feel like that again? It's us Nate, just what you've been yearning for. We know exactly how you like to be touched.”

Nathan whimpers in frustration and conflicted desires. Part of that is true; if he closes his eyes. It’s only when he looks at their faces that he sees; Duke’s eyes are all wrong, Audrey’s smile is all wrong. It isn't them. It's their bodies, but it isn't them.

It is their bodies.

That's all he has left.

 

Duke kisses him again. This time, Nathan kisses back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is part of the LLF Comment Project, which was created with the aim of improving communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates all forms of positive feedback, including:
> 
>   * Short comments
>   * Long comments
>   * Questions
>   * Anything you'd like to see more of
>   * “<3” as extra kudos
>   * Reader-reader interaction
> 

> 
> The LLF Project also has a Comment Builder here.
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> Comments are very welcome no matter how long ago this fic was posted, and no matter how many comments it already has.
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> This author typically replies to comments, however if for any reason you would rather not receive a reply, include #whisper in your comment and I'll leave you be:)


	2. Chapter 2

He wakes alone in a cold bed, and wonders if it was all a dream; a stress-induced nightmare, or the result of a Trouble. Then he gets in the shower and sees a line of red scratches down his chest and he knows it was real.

He assumes they used a spare key to get in, but when he leaves the house he finds the door still bolted and he realises that no amount of physical security will keep them out of somewhere they really want to get into.

He meets Dwight at the Herald and the four of them debate what to do next. They go round in circles for hours; they have no plan. Haven is cut off by the impenetrable shroud that Mara pulled out of Duke, and between the two of them and the Troubles that they have at their command, they have the whole town completely under their control.

Nathan can't shake the feeling that Vince and Dave are still hiding something. He has no choice but to trust them, but the feeling is there all the same. Dwight is trying, but he is distracted by the impossible presence of Lizzie. Nathan can't blame him for that, and how can he blame Vince and Dave either, when he now has a secret of his own?

He almost tells them. The words form in the back of his throat: _Mara and Duke came to my house last night._ But then someone else speaks and the moment is gone. He doesn't know how he would expect them to respond in any case. The continuing debate over what to do next just goes to show that they have no way to stop Mara and Duke from doing whatever they choose. They have access to all the aether they could ever want, and complete control over it. The powers this gives them are almost limitless. They may as well be gods.

-

They come to him again that night, just as he is falling asleep. He knows the door is locked and bolted, he knows they didn't break their way in. One minute he is alone in his bed, and the next they are just … there.

It goes much the same as before. They pull him free of his clothes and run their hands over him as he asks them to stop. They laugh at his protests and he realises the magnitude of his mistake last night in kissing back; they no longer believe him (if they ever did) when he tells them, “No”. It is part of the game for them, a step along the way to seeing him break, and he knows now too that he does not have the strength to resist the things they can do to him, or the ways they can make him feel.

They come to him every night after that, always at a slightly different time, pulling him out of sleep or a dream, or catching him on his way there. By the third night he is expecting them, by the fourth night he is dreaming of them, by the fifth he has given up on wearing anything to bed; what is the point in pyjamas if he is just going to wake up without them?

-

He realises they have done something to his Trouble, or to themselves, so that when he is between them he can feel not just their touch but everything; the sheets underneath him, the frantic thudding of his heart, the cool night air on the hot skin of his cock. They lie either side of him and hold him still to touch him in every way imaginable; soft caresses from the tip of their fingers, firm pressure from their palms as though for a massage, nails that scratch, lips that kiss, tongues that lick, and mouths that are warm and enveloping.

He tries to tell them, “No,” he tries to tell them to stop, but it never makes any difference to what they do, and when they get their hands on his skin, the reactions of his body work against him, fuzzing his brain and making it hard to find the words even if he thought they would do any good.

-

During the days, he helps Vince and Dave, Dwight and the guard to fight the fires (both literal and metaphorical) that the new batch of Troubles has released. Gloria works in Charlotte's old lab in the hospital to try and find what solutions she can, although sometimes that is nothing more sophisticated than a sedative for a Troubled person whose stress response could kill everyone in town.

In between patients, she reads through the notes that Charlotte left, and complains about the lack of time they had to talk before she took Croatoan back through the void to escape Mara’s threats. On the bad days she curses Charlotte to high heaven for saying she wanted to help and then returning home and leaving Mara and the aether behind. On better days she is grateful for the information that may yet help her find a different way to fight.

Because Haven is in a mess, and they know it’s not going to get any better. Mara and Duke seem to be restraining themselves from destroying the place completely and Gloria and the others often wonder why, trying to work out if they have something else planned, something bigger; something worse. Nathan is afraid the reason they’ve decided to leave Haven with some level of normality to it, is simply that they want the opportunity to play with him while he tries to sleep.

He doesn’t know whether this means he should give Mara and Duke what they want, or whether then they would get bored and simply flatten the whole town. He can’t find a way to ask the others what they think without telling them what he hasn’t told them so far.

For the umpteenth time, he leaves them to their debate and goes home alone.

-

And wakes to the sensation of Duke’s mouth on his cock, lips and tongue and warm wet mouth pushing down over him. Nathan gasps at the suddenness of it, but then Mara is there pressing her tongue to his and he hardly has room to breath. Mara stretches his hands out to the side and holds them still, as Duke presses his hands hard to Nathan's hips. She kisses him fiercely as Duke sucks him off, and the thoroughness of the kiss leaves Nathan with no room to react.

He cannot complain, he cannot object, he cannot move, he cannot speak; he barely has room to think as the sensations of their touch wash over him. And over him, and over him; pleasure pulsing through his body unbidden. Mara keeps kissing him until after she feels the pulses of his orgasm fade away.

As Duke moves away from him, Mara straddles him high on his stomach and looks down at him as though studying a puzzle. “You hardly ever speak anymore,” she complains. “It's not the same when you don't say anything. I want to hear you beg.”

“Why should I?” mutters Nathan. “Nothing I say will make you stop.”

For a moment she looks annoyed, then her expression turns to delight as she realises something. Nathan's dread of what she might have thought of shows on his face, and she laughs at the sight.

“I do so love the Hansen Trouble,” she says, and presses her weight down through her hips to his diaphragm so that he can barely breathe. “It makes life so difficult and so frustrating in so many tiny little ways. And then, when it comes to sex, when it comes to _this_ ,” and she shifts her hips against his skin for emphasis, “when it comes to _us,_ it makes things even more fun just with the knowledge that everything you _ever_ feel comes only from us. Poor little Nathan can’t even jerk himself off if we’re not around. Such a delicious thought, with so much potential; we could get you so turned on, so close, just _aching_ to come and so, so near … and then we could just leave, and you wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. No kind of release available to you. All you would be able to do is wait for us to come back, wait for us to finish what we started.”

Nathan lies underneath her and shakes his head, in fear and dread and with the sure and certain knowledge that she is describing her next game to him. She grins that callous grin as she watches his reaction. “Just remember then,” she says, “Every time we come to you, and every time we make you come, just remember to be grateful that we do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is part of the LLF Comment Project, which was created with the aim of improving communication between readers and authors. Positive comments are always very welcome, whether on individual chapters, or at the end of the work.


	3. Chapter 3

The next night they don’t come to him at all, and he wakes feeling hollow and empty, unable to work out how to react. Does this mean they are preparing to leave Haven? To destroy it as they go? Should he be glad if they’ve tired of him, or worried for what this means for everyone else?

The night after, the first thing he is aware of is the touch of cotton on his skin as the sheets shift over his body when they slip into bed either side of him. He is relieved for everyone else, even as he dreads what they have planned for him.

“Why?” Nathan asks. “Why are you doing this?”

Mara laughs, surprised at the question. “Because it’s fun,” she says, as though that should have been obvious. “And,” she adds, the delight clear in her voice, “we made a new toy.”

Nathan can’t help but look surprised, since he thought that he himself was the toy. His glance flies across the bed; they haven’t brought anything with them. Mara chuckles at his confusion. “A new  _ Trouble _ ,” she clarifies. “Just for you. Wanna see?”

“No,” states Nathan firmly, unsure whether she means they are going to give him a new Trouble to replace his existing one, or on top of it, or whether they have a Trouble they plan to use themselves and direct at him. 

She shares a look with Duke and then the two of them push the covers away, exposing Nathan’s skin to the air. Since he doesn’t know what’s coming, he has no idea what to do, but he doesn’t have to wait long. Mara raises her hand above them and the darkness of the bedroom is illuminated briefly by a blue glow from her fingertips. Nathan starts, surprised and confused. Was that lightning?

“It’s a combination of a few different Troubles,” Duke tells him. “Electricity basically, at our fingertips.” He holds up his hand and produces a glow so pale it seems like it’s coming from inside his skin. “The tricky part was getting it controllable enough,” he adds. “We wanted something that we could take from a barely-there tingle, all the way up to heart-attack-inducing pain. This is the tingle,” he says, and the two of them bring their hands towards his chest. 

Nathan watches in apprehension and fascination as the barely-visible blue light is reflected off his skin. And then they get close enough for him to feel it, and he gasps. He takes another two breaths in on top of the first and then he lets out a string of incomprehensible swearing. It’s like some combination of a tickle and a tingle, not the direct contact of skin, but something more delicate, something hard to describe; fascinating, and utterly unique.

They explore his body with this new form of touch and though he has no real choice but to let them, for a while he does not even try to get away. He lies still as they run their hands over him, working their way over his chest and down his arms, finding the sensitive skin inside his elbows and wrists as he shifts his arms to give them better access. They move to his legs and when they reach down to the backs of his knees he swears again. 

He lies spreadeagled as they move about the bed. His arms are relaxed out either side of him, his legs have plenty of space between them too. “Oh by the way, this is not our only new toy,” Mara says casually.

Before Nathan has a chance to wonder what she means, Duke directs an empty hand towards him. “Stay,” he commands. 

Nathan almost laughs,  _ Do they think he’s going to follow an instruction like that? _ But then he tries to move and he finds out what they meant; he can’t. Some form of Trouble is holding him fast to the bed. He can breathe fine, he can turn his head and move his eyes and his mouth. But his body is trapped; he cannot move an inch.

Mara nods a kind of acknowledgement as she sees that this is the case, and then they both move further down his legs towards his feet. They bring their lightning-tipped fingers to the arches of his feet and he wants to pull his legs away but he can’t. The tingle-tickle is more intense against the soles of his feet, and somehow not being able to move at all makes it seem even worse. His breathing turns shallow and very fast, and he throws his head back as they turn up the intensity of the electricity on their fingertips. It’s too much, it’s already too much, but there is nothing he can do and they keep going. Every so often they glance at each other in between watching him, as though looking for some hidden signal. He starts to wonder if they’re psychic.

They turn the power up enough so that it is directly painful against his skin, and then they move back over the arches of his feet, over the insides of his ankles and slowly make their way up the insides of his legs. It’s a very specific kind of pain; he can tell that it’s not going to leave a mark, it’s not actively damaging him like a cut would, but still it’s a sharp intense pain, focused on a pinpoint under their fingers, and somehow also travelling across the whole of his skin. He takes some comfort from the fact that they apparently don’t intend to leave him permanently maimed or scarred, but it is a decidedly unpleasant sensation and he cries out with the intensity of it.

As they each move a hand up the inside of his thighs, the electricity from Duke’s fingers returns to the initial tingle and he brings his other palm electricity-free to press against Nathan’s hip; the warm connection of skin-against-skin as a counter to the spark of the electricity.

Mara brings a hand to his cock. He feels her skin as she moves those skilful fingers, and he breathes with the sensation. Then she brings her other hand to his ribs, and from this one he feels the intense shock of the new Trouble. Pain lances through his ribs and vibrates across his chest. He cries out with the shock of it, and in that instant it is gone.

The pain was brief enough it seems that his cock didn't notice and as Mara continues to stroke him, the rhythm of his breathing shifts back into one of pleasure. Duke’s hands are still on him; one simply of warm skin, one with a barely-there tingle that makes his skin crawl in a fascinatingly pleasant fashion. It's a collection of different sensations that merges into something more than the sum of its parts.

As she continues to move her hand slowly over his cock,  Mara shocks him again and again, always in the same spot on his ribs. He cries out as his heart beats wildly in his chest, his body confused as to whether it should be running from the pain or towards the pleasure, even as he is completely unable to do either. The shocks get more intense but shorter and Mara spaces them out a little more, leaving more time for the pleasure to build. Eventually she lets him come, with just her fingertips pushing the smallest of tingling shocks against his ribs, and as he does Duke leans down to suck a warm wet kiss onto his nipple.

As his body pulses through its pleasure and comes to stillness again, he breathes deep and slightly ragged breaths; wrung out, washed out and unable to move.

They leave him be as they reach up to kiss and run their hands over each other. He closes his eyes and to his surprise they don't seem to notice; too wrapped up in each other and the moment to give much thought to him. But even so he understands that the moment they are enjoying is one where they have taken what they want from him. It is one where they kneel over his prone and helpless, worn out body. It is one where they have control and he does not.

Even with his eyes closed he can hear them as they move, feel the bed shift underneath them. He knows when Duke’s fingers slip inside Mara's cunt from the way her breathing changes. He can tell when Duke is close to orgasm by the pitch of his moans, and in this moment Nathan realises something. They know him better than he wishes they did, but he knows them too, even better maybe than they realise.

He doesn't know what to do with this knowledge, but as he listens to Mara tell Duke what a good job he did, Nathan holds on to three simple words, and the tiniest little bit of hope;  _ knowledge is power. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is part of the LLF Comment Project, which was created with the aim of improving communication between readers and authors. Positive comments are always very welcome, whether on individual chapters, or at the end of the work.


	4. Chapter 4

Nathan continues to fill his days working with Dwight and the others to try and limit the impact of the Troubles and help those who have been affected. He does what he can to help, as Haven struggles through the days. The others consider it a piece of good luck that so far the nights have been quiet; that they and the town can at least get some sleep. They wonder about this sometimes. Nathan doesn't tell them it's because Mara and Duke already have their night time entertainment all figured out.

He considers himself lucky that no one else he is close to is killed or seriously injured. He considers himself lucky that his house is still in one piece, and at night he can return to the relative respite of an empty and quiet home. He forces himself to eat, and then takes himself to bed early most nights, trying to compensate for the sleep that is denied him.

-

Mara and Duke continue to come to him at night, using his body in various different ways as they take delight in his reluctance, in his pleasure, and in his pain. Most nights they play with the electricity Trouble, shocking him when they arrive so that when their mouths finally touch him instead, his body reacts all the more eagerly. Or touching him softly at first, the Trouble unused until he is right on the point of orgasm, at which point the now-familiar pain cuts through the crest of his pleasure in a way which somehow only makes the sensation more intense.

Sometimes they use his body to make themselves come, sometimes they make him watch while they fuck each other. He used to love to watch Audrey and Duke together; it was something so full of love and tenderness. Now the two of them have turned the same actions into something completely different; something harsh and manipulative, a violation of what they had shared before.

They come to him every night and as the weeks go by, one night blurs with the next. Moments of pleasure, of pain, of desire, of humiliation, of longing for what used to be.

-

Mara bends low over his body, opens her mouth with a grin and brings her tongue towards his cock. She stops before she gets there, watching his reaction instead and what she sees makes her laugh with delight. “Disgust and arousal on your face at the same time is such a pretty combination my darling.”

“Don't call me that,” Nathan spits out between gritted teeth.

“Daaarling,” she drawls at him, and laughs again before running her lips down over his cock and taking him deep inside her mouth.

-

“Open your eyes,” Mara tells him as she fucks him.

He shakes his head.

“Open your eyes and look at me or I'll amp up your Trouble so you can’t feel either of us. You won't be able to feel it as I fuck you, soft and slow or hard and fast, you won’t feel a thing as I move, or when I come,” and she shifts her hips, just a little. He is so close. “Or maybe I can tweak your Trouble so you can’t feel me, but you can still feel this,” and she rubs her thumb and fingers together, sparks of blue lightning jumping between them. He doesn't doubt her intention to follow through on the threat.

“Open your eyes and look at me,” she says again, and after a moment he does.

-

Mara straddles him and for a moment he lets himself dream. He imagines that the body moving above him belongs to Audrey and without thinking he moans her name. Annoyed, Mara clamps her hand hard over his mouth, “Say that name again and I'll cut out your tongue,” she hisses. He believes her, and he holds his mouth shut under her grip.

-

Before, when Duke was himself, they didn't fuck each other, not with Nathan’s Trouble active. As much as Nathan had wanted to, he hadn't wanted Duke inside him when he couldn’t feel it. But now Duke takes him like that, flips him over onto his stomach and thrusts into him, fucking him hard into the mattress without so much as a warning. Nathan chokes out a, “Duke No," and tries to crawl away up the bed. Duke stops moving for a moment to grab Nathan’s arms and pull them towards him. He takes Nathan's wrists in his hands, holding them together at the base of Nathan's spine. “Nate, yes,” he says, insistent. “I know you want it. We used to talk about this, about how once the Troubles were over we would finally be able to. I know you want it.” The aether in Duke’s blood gives him vastly more strength than Nathan has, and he cannot pull his wrists free. Duke’s hips start to move again, faster and faster and Nathan cannot get away. 

“Not like this,” Nathan says quietly into the pillow. With his hands held behind him he is unable to move, and unable to get away from the truth in what Duke says; he had wanted for so long to find out what this felt like. But now he would give anything to be able to go back to how things were before. He would give anything to see Duke himself again, but he knows the man he loved is gone. He feels the body that was Duke’s move roughly inside of him; pain and pleasure and humiliation and want and longing all mix together until he can no longer quite distinguish between them. 

“Not like this,” he says again, as he screws his eyes shut.

-

Mara holds up her hand, playing with the blue lightning she has at her control. It dances between her fingertips and Nathan watches, dimly aware that it is in fact a beautiful sight, the sharp blue colour lighting up her pale skin in the dark.

She plays with the intensity of it too; taking it from the pale glow of that fascinating barely-there tingle that makes him forget everything else, up to the intense light that means he has trouble breathing from the pain of it. It becomes bright enough that he can see the glow on her face.

“We used this on you a lot last night,” she says, sounding almost sympathetic. “I think you probably deserve a night off from this. You will have to earn it though,” she warns him.

Nathan looks dubious, wondering whether whatever she is thinking of will be worth it.

“I don't know if you know this Nathan,” she adds conversationally, “But we haven't used the full power of this on you yet. This is what you had last night, remember?”

She looks at him expectantly and he nods. Then she looks back at her hand and as he does too he sees the brightness and the intensity of the blue colour increase. It doubles, and doubles again and it keeps going. It's bright enough now to light the whole room, and it's painful even to look at. Nathan stares at her, dumbfounded.

“I don't think you want to find out what this feels like, Nathan, do you?”

He quickly shakes his head, then adds, “No.” There is no point denying it.

“This isn't all of it of course,” she adds, shifting so that her other hand is free, and then doubling the amount of light in the room. “Or this,” she says, and Duke produces the same glow she is.

Nathan does not want to find out what it would feel like if they were to touch him right now. Hadn't they mentioned the option of heart-attack-inducing pain? That seems like a very real possibility from what he can see. Even if they have access to a Trouble that would let them bring him back to life, and even if they chose to use it, that is not a feeling he wants to experience.

Abruptly the light shuts off, returning them to the dim illumination of the light bulb in the hallway. She looks at him, satisfied that she has made her point. “So,” she says, “Are you ready to earn a night off from the pain?”

She raises her eyebrows, expecting a response. “What …?” Nathan begins. He doesn't know how to finish the sentence.

“It's easy,” she tells him, and to his surprise she shifts backwards a little further away from him. As Duke does the same she says, “We want to watch. We want to watch you get yourself off. Make yourself come for us and then we'll go, no pain. Let us watch you touch yourself and then you can sleep.”

Nathan does not like this idea, and he also finds it disconcerting how well she knows exactly what to say to sell the idea to him. As he hesitates, Duke tries a different tack, “It must seem like forever since you were even able to, but now you can. Give yourself whatever you want; you're in control. Drag it out if you like, make it long and slow. Or make it quick, whatever you want; you're in control.”

Nathan resents the blatant untruth of that, and he does not want them watching him; he had never been fond of being watched, not specifically. It had always left him too self conscious to really enjoy what he was feeling. And now? When he doesn't even want to be here at all, who's to say he will even be able to make it happen? They shift a little further back on the bed, looking him up and down, taking in the view, eyes resting eventually on his cock.

“Pleasure you're in control of, or pain that you're not. Do you really need to think about it Nate?” Duke asks him.

Nathan closes his eyes, wondering if they will tell him to open them again, but they keep quiet. He brings his hand to his hip. If they really are going to stay still and quiet and let him keep his eyes closed, maybe he can imagine they're not even there.

He brings his hand to his cock and almost gasps at the sensation. It has been a long time since he has felt this, and it is different from having Mara or Duke touch him. It is different from having Audrey touch him too, back when her touch was his whole world. 

He curls his fingers and bends his wrist, gripping and stroking, sensation flowing through him. He doesn't think about what he's doing, he doesn't plan for it to be slow or quick, he just reacts, just responds to the feel of it. He almost (almost) forgets that they are there. He can almost imagine that he is in an alternative universe where the Troubles never existed, where he shares his bed willingly with Duke and Audrey, where they are away for the weekend but he will see them again, he will kiss them again, joke and laugh with them, tell him he loves them. 

His pleasure builds and as he approaches the crest of that wave he pauses, just for a moment. He is dimly aware of movement either side of him, but it seems like it's too late to be relevant; he knows that as he moves his wrist again he will come.

And as he does, as the orgasm hits, something else does too. Mara and Duke have brought their hands to his crotch; one on his balls, one on his hip. As his orgasm hits they shock him, hard enough to be painful, but somehow they know to pick a level of pain which is just not-quite too much. The pain cuts through his orgasm but it doesn't cut it off. He moves his hand more quickly, reacting without thinking to the sensations of his body and he moans loudly as the familiar cold sharpness of the pain mingles with and somehow amplifies the pleasure of the orgasm. He is aware of the sounds of cries that he belatedly realises must be his, a string of swear words taking place in his voice.

They take their hands away just as he starts to come down, and he grips a little tighter as he finds the last remnants of pleasure his body has to offer him.

As he finally stills, his hand flops to the side of him and he thinks he can actually hear Mara grin.

“Tell me that wasn't one of the  _ best _ orgasms of your  _ entire _ life if you want, but I won't believe you. You think you're above us, you think you're better than this, but your body says otherwise. Your moans of pleasure say otherwise and the way your mouth falls open when you come says otherwise.” Mara stops for a brief impression of him, biting her lip and throwing her head back before letting out a muted groan, her lips parted just a little, just enough. “We see you Nathan Wuornos. We see what you like, and it isn't just these bodies and it isn't just the ways of touching you that we remember from before; it's all of it. You like that you can't get away, you like that you have no control, you like that we do things you don't want us to, and you like the pain.”

Nathan shakes his head, but he doesn't have the energy to argue. He is washed out, limbs and muscles empty, body tired from lack of sleep.

“No?” Mara asks. “Well, if you don’t exactly  _ like _ the pain, you certainly don’t  _ mind _ it. And I think you can learn to like anything we do to you. We have so many lessons to teach you, by the time we’re done, you will be happy to beg for this special kind of pain that only we can inflict on you.”

Nathan shakes his head again. “No,” he says.

“hmmm,” says Mara unconvinced, “We'll see.”

And with that they are gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is part of the LLF Comment Project, which was created with the aim of improving communication between readers and authors. Positive comments are always very welcome, whether on individual chapters, or at the end of the work.


	5. Chapter 5

Nathan wonders sometimes if the one advantage they have is Mara’s hubris. She assumes they are no threat to her and so she leaves them alone. Pays them no attention and leaves them room to try and think up ways to stop her. She is high on her success in releasing Duke’s Trouble bomb and in getting Charlotte to take Croatoan back through the void. She is high on her success with Duke himself, having wiped his original personality away, and she is high with the lack of resistance Haven has offered her since the shroud went up.

He also has a feeling that she may be right in her assessment of their capabilities, but he doesn't say so to the others. Who is he to crush the little hope they have left?

Himself, he can feel hope starting to slip away. The new Troubles continue to combine and express themselves in ever more horrific and unexpected ways. Sometimes he helps people, sometimes he talks them down from hurting themselves or someone else. Sometimes it helps that the situation in general is worse than before because that means people are more aware of what the Troubles are.

But sometimes it just makes it worse because they are also more scared, feeling hopeless, and more likely to have their emotions (and therefore their Trouble) spinning out of control.

Sometimes he just arrives too late. Arrives at a point where the only thing left to do is clear up the dead bodies, victim to ever more strange and appalling ways to die. Each time that happens, he feels the numbness of his skin creep a little further inside him. Each time, he feels a little more hope die as his heart itself begins to harden. With every body bag he zips up, and every relative he tells the bad news, it seems more and more likely that he might reach a point where he never feels anything at all.

So when Mara and Duke come to him and run their hands over his body, he is sometimes surprised that even their touch can still break through his Trouble. They touch him and it’s not what he wants to feel, but it is at least something, and some days he clings to that even as he tells them “No" and asks for the pain to stop.

-

Tonight they come to him early, pull the covers away and hold him against the bed with a Trouble before arranging him where they want him; they put him on his back, arms and legs straight, feet wide apart and arms stretched to the corners of the bed. He tries to move, but it takes all the energy he has just to wiggle the tips of his fingers. He is exposed and vulnerable and he doesn’t know what’s coming next. They sit either side of him and look at each other for a moment before Mara starts to talk.

“OK, here's how it's going to go. We're going to shock you anyway. You can't move, and you can't stop us, so you _are_ going to feel this,” she brings the bright blue light of her favourite Trouble to the sole of his foot and he cries out as the powerful shock hits his skin. “That is going to happen anyway, whatever you do. The choice is in what else happens. If you ask for it, Duke will go down on you, wrap that clever tongue around your cock so you get to feel something else, something nicer. If you ask. We can see that your body is ready for it. All you have to do is say ‘Please’,” Mara finishes and laughs her callous laugh as she shocks his foot again. “Just one little word.”

Nathan does not want to ask them for anything, particularly something that Mara wants him to. He doesn’t want to give her what she wants and he doesn’t want to acknowledge to them that they have the power to make him feel good. Not consciously anyway. His unconscious, or some form of physical memory, admits that through his body every time they come to him. The association between their presence and sex is strong enough that he is always hard as soon as they arrive, often in fact before. He closes his eyes and thinks of other things, but the subconscious association is too strong; his body expects sex and so it prepares for it. He is hard, whether he wants to be or not and he doesn't know if the pain will make any difference to that, or how long it will take to do so.

“Anything you want to ask for, Nathan?”

He shakes his head and screws his eyes shut as he prepares for the shock. He feels it after a moment, and bites his lip in an effort not to cry out. He tastes blood and then to his surprise he feels Duke’s lips on his; just for the briefest moment and he realises Duke was licking the blood from his skin. He opens his eyes to see Duke’s black eyes flecked through with silver. Duke takes a long breath in, a kind of satisfied sigh, and Nathan wonders if this will become a new game; cutting him to make use of his Troubled blood.

It doesn’t seem to be on the agenda for tonight at least, as Mara shocks him again. He reminds himself to keep breathing, tells himself he has got through this kind of pain before, points out to himself that if they actually wanted him dead he would have been cold and buried long ago.

She keeps going though, and belatedly he realises that doing what she wants is the only thing that will stop the pain. It is not an either/or, it is a _when,_ a now/later. If he asks for Duke’s mouth, that will mean an orgasm he doesn't want but it will mean something else as well; they will get bored and leave and the pain will stop.

Even so he resists for a while longer. But eventually, there doesn't seem to be any other choice. They could keep this up all week if they wanted, and eventually he will not be able to take it anymore.  “Please,” he whispers. “Please Duke.”

“Please Duke what?” Mara asks.

Nathan should have known she wouldn't let him get away with it that easily, but at least she eases up on the shocks a little so it's easier to speak. “Go down on me,” he says, “Make me come.”

Duke leans down towards him as Mara shocks him again. “Are you sure?” Duke asks, making him say it again.

“Yes,” says Nathan.

Duke moves a little closer but stops again.

Nathan realises what they want. They want him to beg; one little word is in fact not enough at all.

“Please,” he says again. “Please Duke, I…”

“You what?” asks Duke, sounding curious.

“I want your mouth on me. Please.”

Duke grins and bends his head, running his lips over Nathan's cock and then pulling away again. “Like that?” he asks, mock-innocence in his voice.

“Yes,” replies Nathan (because what else can he say?). “Like that. More. Please. Do it, please.”

Mara grins, “Now he sounds like he really means it,” she observes.

Duke’s lips find Nathan's cock again and Mara amps up the pain in response. Nathan struggles to breath, fears that his heart might actually beat its way out of his chest. And then the next moment Duke is grinning at him again, “More?” he asks.

“More. Please. Please… don't stop,” Nathan says. And as Duke takes him into his mouth again and Nathan can see an end to the pain, he keeps talking so that Duke will carry on with what he's doing and the point at which they will leave gets a little closer. “Please don't stop, don't stop, yes, more, please… please.”

Duke does as he is asked and the pleasure he creates is intense to match the pain. After a while, as the pleasure builds, Mara lets the pain drop, just a little. Just enough that Duke’s tongue pushes him over the edge and as he comes, Mara lets go of him completely. The sudden and unexpected absence of pain makes the orgasm all the more intense and as he comes down Nathan wonders if the number of different ways they have to play with him, with his pleasure and pain response, is in fact limitless.

“Why are you doing this?”  he asks her again, in between ragged breaths. “You don't even like me.”

“But I like sex,” she points out. “And the thing of it is; Audrey, Lucy, Sarah, all the others, they stole my body from me. Wore it around town like it was theirs, like it belonged to _them._ And you were _right there_ . You helped them steal my body from me. You _made a baby_ with my body without my involvement.”

Nathan opens his mouth to speak, but she doesn't give him the chance. “I want you to know what it feels like,” she says, “to have your body betray you. To have you body do things you do not want it to do. I want you to know what it feels like to be forced to give up control of your body, totally and absolutely and what's more, to someone who you _do not even like_.”

Nathan shakes his head, disagreeing with her portrayal of events. “I didn't know,” he points out. “I didn't know you even existed.”

She bends forward, her mouth close to his ear. “ _Exactly_ ,” she hisses, and shocks him into unconsciousness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is part of the LLF Comment Project, which was created with the aim of improving communication between readers and authors. Positive comments are always very welcome, whether on individual chapters, or at the end of the work.


	6. Chapter 6

The next morning, he gets a message from Dwight to meet at the Herald; Gloria has an idea. He’s across town at the time and he is the last to arrive. “Gloria,” he says in greeting. “Dwight says you have a plan.”

“Half a plan,” she clarifies. “Maybe. An idea.”

“Great, let's hear it.”

“I've been going over the notes Charlotte left, doing some tests on samples of Troubled blood. Long story short; I have something that acts like a virus for Troubled people. It latches on to the aether in the blood and causes symptoms something like malaria.”

“OK?” says Nathan, confused.

“The point is, it latches on to the aether in the blood. For most Troubled people, they'd have a pretty shitty week, but they'd probably come out of it OK. Mara and Duke however, are not most Troubled people. Their blood must be saturated with the stuff. The symptoms for them would be much more severe. Fatal, even.”

Nathan nods. He has long known it might come to this. “How do we infect them?” he asks.

Gloria sits back in her seat, “That’s the part of the plan we don't have yet. They're not exactly going to come into the lab for an injection.”

There is a thoughtful silence before Nathan asks, “Would it be contagious?”

“Through close bodily contact, yes.” Nathan huffs a bitter little laugh at that, and Gloria looks at him confused, but she carries on. “But I don't think that helps; we'd still need to get near them. Plus, it would have to be in the latency period before the symptoms show.”

“How long would that be?”

Gloria shrugs, “Six to eight hours, probably.”

“I can do it,” Nathan tells them. He looks up to see four confused faces, and looks down again as he explains. “They come to my ... house, at night to … torment me. With the memory of how things used to be.”

There is a slightly shocked silence while the others take this in.

“Still though,” says Dwight, concerned, “‘Close bodily contact’ what does that mean, exchange of bodily fluids? How would you…?”

“Not a problem,” Nathan interrupts him quietly. “They are very specific in ... Sometimes Mara gets inventive, but exchange of bodily fluids is pretty much a given.”

This time the shock is even more audible in its silence.

“Oh kiddo,” Gloria says at last.

Something in the way she says it makes Nathan look up, and he takes in the concern on her face. Concern and sympathy and a far high degree of understanding than he might have expected.

“If it gives us a way to get to them it will be worth it,” he says. “You can infect me this evening and they'll do the rest.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is part of the LLF Comment Project, which was created with the aim of improving communication between readers and authors. Positive comments are always very welcome, whether on individual chapters, or at the end of the work.


	7. Chapter 7

Nathan doesn't want Mara or Duke to notice any difference in his mood, so as he makes his way from Gloria’s lab back to his house in the fading light, he tells himself the plan won't work.

He tells himself that Gloria got it wrong, and the virus she studied in a Petri dish will behave differently in a live body. He tells himself that Mara will sense the presence of it in his blood, that the Crocker Curse will provide Duke with an immunity. He tells himself it's all a trick designed by Mara - the idea suggested to Gloria in her dreams to taunt them with false hope.

Even so he is aware he should take every opportunity to kiss the both of them; Gloria told him that saliva should be an efficient transfer mechanism.

And at the same time he is aware that this might be the last time. The last time he sees them, the last time he feels them. If it goes wrong and they get ill but recover, if they realise what he’s done… he shivers with the dread of what they would invent for him, but he knows it would focus not on pleasure but pain. If it goes right, then they will not be around to invent anything for him, but that could make this the last time he ever feels anything, if he is left with his Trouble and the only people with any immunity to it are gone. Or, the virus could be more harsh than Gloria realises; it could kill him too.

The subconscious awareness that this may be the last time he experiences any physical sensation makes him want to make the most of it, and he knows will make his body react all the more enthusiastically. But he knows if he lets too much of that show, if they realise he wants to kiss them, they will deny it to him out of spite. And so he has to try to kiss them without seeming like he wants to. He has to protest just the same amount he usually does, without letting on that anything is different, even though everything is. He has to tread the line between disgust and desire just right. It feels like he is planning to walk a tightrope ten stories up in a gale, and with nothing but cold hard concrete below.

-

It's still early when they arrive and he is not yet quite asleep. He becomes aware of the sound of them at the foot of the bed. They are whispering to each other as though not to wake him, so he stays still, feigning sleep.

There is a slight rustling sound and he cracks open an eye, confused. He sees that they are pulling the covers slowly off the bed, off him, and a moment later he is left lying naked and uncovered, open to their gaze. He wants to cover himself, turn away and curl into a ball but he doesn't; they would only take delight in moving him back.

He hears them talk some more. He catches words like “want” and “hot" and “resists”, but he can't make sense of what they're saying. Before long they join him on the bed, creeping up beside him slowly as they must have that first time when it took him a while to wake. He hears Mara say in the softest whisper to Duke, “I wonder how close to orgasm we could get him before he wakes. Imagine his face if he's dreaming of her and then wakes as he comes to find us instead.”

They bring their hands softly to his chest, light lazy swirls that he can only just feel and which would not be enough to wake him if he were actually sleeping. He considers going along with their game, pretending to sleep as long as possible, since it's likely to mean they don't get too imaginative with other, less pleasant, games. But just lying there isn't enough today, he needs to do what he can to take the opportunity for a kiss. He needs to do what he can to pass the infection on.

So the next time a finger runs over a nipple he blinks open his eyes, looks from one of them to the other as though mildly surprised.

Duke and Mara look at each other. “Guess that answers that,” Duke says.

Mara frowns, annoyed that her game has ended early, but it doesn't take her  long to think of another. “I wonder what his favourite thing is?” she says to Duke, apparently deciding to go all out on treating him like a toy today. “The thing that would make him accept the most pain?” and runs her fingertips together as a flash of blue crackles over them.

Nathan tries to jerk away from her at the thought of what she might do to find out, but there is nowhere to go and it only makes her laugh. He feels the vibrations of it through her touch, and since the two of them are either side of him he feels everything else as well. His heart thuds in his chest with the anticipation of it, and the expectation of her touch means he is hard already.

It's not Mara that touches him though, but Duke. “It would be something soft I think,” he tells her. “A kiss maybe. Like they used to share before,” and he leans down to press his lips softly to Nathan's; careful and tender in a facsimile of caring that is its own unique kind of pain.

Nathan kisses back, because what else can he do? He can't get away, he shouldn't get away today, but also it is Duke (Duke’s body at least) and this could be the last kiss he ever feels. Despite everything the kiss feels so good and he makes the mistake of letting the pleasure of it show in a soft moan at the back of his throat. It's quiet but he knows Duke heard it because he feels the grin on his mouth even as they kiss.

Duke’s hand comes to the centre of Nathan's chest. Instinctively, Nathan tries to pull away, knowing what's coming, but there is still nowhere to go and Duke’s hand only follows him. The tingle grows slowly, at first light enough that he's not sure if he imagined it.

But before too long it reaches that point where it's strong enough to be pleasant; a tickle against his skin, the nerve endings dancing in response to a rare moment of sensation. The pleasure doesn't last long though. As it gets more and more intense, it passes into uncomfortable and quickly on to pain.

The noises Nathan makes in the back of his throat change along with it. Noises of reluctance, noises of protest, noises of pain. He can almost hear Mara grinning at the sound. Duke keeps kissing him and he kisses back because it is the only thing he has to distract himself from the hurt.

Dukes hand moves down his ribs to his stomach and settles just below his belly button. Nathan isn't sure if Duke has upped the power again, or if it just hurts more there because the skin is more sensitive. Duke’s hand makes a little circle, and then his mouth pulls away, the comfort of the kiss gone.

Nathan strains to follow him, whimpering in protest, but Mara holds him still and he lies back on the bed, eyes closed. Duke moves his hand away from Nathan's skin just a fraction; not enough to dull the pain, just enough that Nathan can no longer feel the warmth of his skin.

So now the pain is all there is. It lances through him like a knife though it leaves no wound. It vibrates through his whole body, bouncing over his spine and making its way down his legs. He is breathing hard against it as his frantic heart pumps his blood ever faster round his body.

He comes to realise Mara is talking, “So my love, you have a choice again today. You can push Duke’s hand away and he'll let you, but then he won't touch you again tonight. Or, you can pull him back down to your mouth and he'll keep doing what he's doing, but he'll kiss you as he makes you come.” At that moment Dukes hand dips a little lower on Nathan's body, suggestive, just for a moment.

Nathan hesitates, wondering how he would have responded to this choice yesterday, wondering what he would do without the knowledge of what Gloria has injected him with. But then he realises that’s irrelevant; he is infected and he needs to take every chance he can to pass it on. That means accepting contact, that means choosing kisses.

He reaches up to pull Duke down towards him. He sees the grin on Duke’s face and hears a satisfied sound from Mara before their lips meet.

Duke kisses him in the same way as before; soft and gentle kisses that gradually start to get more full, more enveloping. The kind of kisses that would become his whole world if it weren't for the handprint of pain now doing circles on his stomach.

The pain changes a little, becomes more focused somehow, like pin pricks that hurt but don't vibrate through him in quite the same way. And then the circles Duke’s hand is making widen and his fingers dip lower, brushing through the hair between Nathan's legs, and then coming to rest at the base of his cock.

The sounds that Nathan makes through the kiss show not just pain and pleasure now but surprise as well, at the way the pain feels when Duke wraps his fingers around his erection, at the fact that he is even still hard through the pain. He wonders in fact if they have done something else to him, some kind of very specific Trouble to make sure they find him hard whenever they arrive.

Or maybe it is just the familiarity of the sensation and the association of it with them and with sex. Maybe it is like Mara said, maybe there is something he likes about it after all. Or maybe Duke’s fingers just know what they are doing well enough that the pain doesn't matter. Because between that and the continuing kiss, Duke pulls him up towards pleasure, towards orgasm, a gradual building of sensation that eventually he can not come down from.

Duke is clever in how he uses his hand and he is clever too in how he uses the pain. He varies it as he varies the speed and pressure of his touch, and he kisses Nathan deeply all the while. There is that point, just before orgasm; a pause almost. The building of sensation into something where the release becomes inevitable. In that split second before climax, Duke cuts off the pain, just for a moment. Nathan moans a grateful sound, intense pleasure pulsing through him as the climax hits. And that is the moment Duke ramps the pain right back up.

The pain lances back through him, mixing with the orgasm that Duke continues to pull out of him with those clever fingers of his, and the noises that Nathan makes alternate between whimpers of pain and moans of pleasure loud themselves despite, or perhaps because of, the pain.

Duke pulls away from him slowly, and Nathan lies still with his eyes closed, feeling the tiredness in his body in a way which he can't do when they're not there, feeling how washed out Duke has left him.

“That was fun to watch,” says Mara appreciatively, and gives Duke a long kiss as though in reward. “I'm not sure that was his _very_ favourite thing though. I think I might have something else to offer. And in any case I want a turn,” she grins at them both as she kneels and straddles him.

Nathan feels her knees either side of his hips, the warmth of her skin, and then when she bends down to kiss him, he feels so much more; the patch of hair between her legs, her stomach warm against his, her breasts soft against his chest, and then her hands in his hair and her lips on his.

She kisses him lazily, slowly, softly before turning it strong and intense, pinning him to the bed with her body and the urgency of her kiss. It reminds him of the way Audrey would get sometimes, if they hadn't seen each other for a while, or something else made her suddenly decide she wanted him and she was just going to take what she was after. Those had always been good times for Nathan, and his body remembers them well enough that, to his surprise, by the time she pulls out of the long kiss he is half hard again already.

“Kisses are fun,” Mara acknowledges, “But they're nothing compared to the act itself.” She shifts her hips over him, a suggestive promise. “That’s your favourite thing I think, that’s what you'd take hours of this for.”

She holds her hands up and her palms turn blue with the electricity-like energy she controls. Nathan jumps at the sight; nothing Duke had done to him had been that bright. “I think, for the feel of my cunt, you would learn to like this kind of pain,” Mara says and she places both hands flat on his chest, palms over his nipples and fingernails digging into his skin.

Nathan tries to scream but that would require taking a breath in first and he can't even remember how to do that. The pain is blinding, all encompassing, dancing across every inch of his skin. It is at least short-lived, Mara pulling her hands away after only a moment.

Nathan's heart is pounding against his chest and his ribs work overtime to pull fresh air into his lungs. His hands grip the sheets either side of him, his toes are curled over the soles of his feet that tingle. But, he is still hard. Learn to like the pain? He is afraid that given time she could indeed make that happen. He hopes she doesn't get the chance.

“You have the same choice. Push me away if you like and I'll go; we'll both go and it'll be just you here, lonely and hard and with no way to even jerk yourself off.”

“I don't want that.”

“No,” says Mara with a laugh. “Who would? So you choose the pain then? You will take whatever I decide to give you?”

Nathan nods. What choice does he have?

She fucks him carefully, intently, her hands always on him, the pleasure always balanced by pain. She shocks him until he can hardly breathe, then fucks him as he fights to fill his lungs with air, the breathlessness adding to the pleasure, a counterpoint to the pain until everything becomes one.

She brings him close, then leans down to kiss him. Lips a breath away from his, she whispers an instruction to him, “Say my name. I want to hear you moan _my_ name in thoughtless pleasure.”

“Mara.” He spits it out bluntly, as though it is a curse, and she shocks him for it, hard.

“I could still go, you know. Just in case you're thinking you can deal with the shocks, just in case you've learnt to enjoy them already. I could pull away from you right now, leave you on the brink of orgasm, stuck and frustrated until we come back, and who can say when that will even be? Maybe we will find someone else to play with tomorrow. Say my name like you mean it. Say my name like you know I'm the source of all the pleasure you will ever feel.”

There is at least some truth to that last part, and he steals himself for the lie, thinks of it as an act, and puts as much desire and pleasure into her name as he can. He says it again, and again, and he supposes it works because she starts moving once more. She holds one hand to his chest pouring sparks into his ribcage, brings the other between her legs so that it's her orgasm that pushes him over the edge. He whispers her name again and again (because really, what choice does he have?) but he thinks of Audrey as he comes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is part of the LLF Comment Project, which was created with the aim of improving communication between readers and authors. Positive comments are always very welcome, whether on individual chapters, or at the end of the work.


	8. Chapter 8

When he wakes they're gone and the first hints of daylight are poking round the curtains. It seems to take him a long time to stand up, and when he makes it to the bathroom he is sick. He stands and looks at his reflection in the mirror; he looks tired, and pale. He notices that he's got skinny, and there are dark circles under his eyes. Though he can't feel the dizziness, the fact that he is struggling to stand without swaying seems like another indication that he is not well.

He puts on sweatpants and a sweater, shakily changes the sheets on the bed, and then flops down heavily onto it to phone Gloria. “It's done,” he says. “They're gone. I think I'm getting ill.”

She tells him she'll be right there and he drops the phone onto the sheets beside him as he falls backwards, his body lying crossways on the bed, just at the same angle they had him when they…. No. He tells himself not to think about that, not to think about them, not to think about anything. He starts counting down from 100 to distract himself.

He's struggling somewhere around 50 when he hears Gloria let herself in with the key he gave her.

-

Being ill when he can't actually feel it is a strange experience. He can tell his body is tired and weak because it doesn't respond when he tries to do things. Even moving his head takes longer than it should; it's like he's moving through treacle. Gloria tells him he's exhausted on top of the illness and, while he would object if he could just get his mouth to co-operate, he knows that she's right; he hasn't been sleeping properly for months.

If he looks down he can see that he is either drenched in sweat or shivering, or both at once. On the rare occasion he tries to sit up, the room spins around him and unless someone is there to hold him he can't keep himself upright.

But he takes comfort in how bad he feels, because if Gloria is even half right about what she infected him with (and now that he is not trying to convince himself otherwise, he knows that she is), then it will be having the planned effect on the people who have ruined Haven.

He tries not to think too much about exactly what that means. He tries not to think about them dying alone and confused. He tries not to think about the bodies of his lovers waiting to be found somewhere by bystanders who now hate them. He tries not to think also about the rest of his life spent alone with an impenetrable Trouble and no option of release from it.

He wakes in snatches, feeling his infirmity only in his body's refusal to stand or move or do anything he asks of it. After a day or two he lets consciousness and unconsciousness wash over him equally, simply waiting it out on faith in Gloria’s words that this illness will not kill him, and that her and Dwight will look after him in the meantime.

The week goes by in a blur. Whenever he wakes, there is always someone there; usually Gloria, sometimes Dwight, occasionally the comfortingly familiar sound of Vince and Dave bickering in the hall.

Usually it's quiet, but sometimes he hears Gloria reading aloud, though he can't concentrate on it for long enough to tell what she's reading from. Once he catches Dwight cheering at some kind of sporting event he can't identify. He is encouraged by the normality of that, the idea of paying attention to something so trivial. It tells him that the rate of disasters must have slowed. It tells him Mara and Duke are not out for revenge.

The next time he wakes he hears Dwight's voice again. He sounds more serious now, but not stressed, not frantic, more … puzzled.

“So does it mean he'll take longer to get better?”

“Don't know about that,” Gloria admits. “Might do. It is more invasive than I realised. Diseases don't always act the same way in the real world as they do in the lab.”

“No I get that, I'm just… the illness is actually breaking down the aether in his system?”

“At the same time as attacking his system, yes. It's like a double effect on him. Good news is it will be ten times worse for Mara and Duke, with the level of aether they must have in their blood I don't see how they could survive this, even with treatment. If there was any.”

There is a slightly guilty-sounding silence possibly fuelled by the realisation that Nathan may be able to hear them, but he stays still and doesn't speak. He doesn't mind them saying it, it's what had to be done.

“OK but then… does that mean that when he gets better the aether will be gone? His Trouble will be gone?” confusion battles with hope in Dwight’s voice.

“It's hard to be sure, but yes it might do.”

“And you have more of this stuff, right? You could infect me, once Nathan's better. You could infect others, if they wanted it?”

There is another silence in which Nathan imagines Gloria glaring at Dwight. If he’d had the energy it would have made him laugh.

“ _Once_ he is 100% recovered, we'll think about it. And _if_ other people want it too, then maybe. But I'm not infecting the whole town at once Dwight, this is a serious condition, anyone with any other health conditions would need to be exempt, we'd need to keep the rate of infection slow enough to provide enough people to care for the infected. It's not something to be done lightly.”

Nathan could hear that Dwight had turned to face him as he replied. “No,” he acknowledges. “I see that. Something to think about though?”

“Yes,” Gloria concedes. “Something to think about. _Once_ he's better and _if_ his Trouble is gone.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is part of the LLF Comment Project, which was created with the aim of improving communication between readers and authors. Positive comments are always very welcome, whether on individual chapters, or at the end of the work.


	9. Chapter 9

He wakes slowly, daylight visible through his eyelids. It is quiet and he feels no inclination to move; he simply lies there soaking up the peacefulness and the novel lack of expectation that he do anything.

After a while he hears Gloria at his side, “The worst is over kiddo,” she tells him. “You're going to be OK.”

Nathan doubts this, but he sees no reason to argue in the face of her certainty, and it is nice to hear her sounding relaxed.

The bed shifts as she sits down next to him. After a moment she holds a flannel to his forehead and tells him again, “Your fever’s coming down, you're going to be OK.”

And as Nathan feels the coolness of the water against his skin and notices the texture of the fabric that holds it, he starts to realise that despite the unlikeliness of that statement, she might, in fact, be right after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there we go, the first smudge of daylight at the end of the tunnel.
> 
> I don't consider the darkness of this to be my normal style and at various points along the way I was wondering why I was writing it, or where it was coming from. I think there are two parts to it for me (besides the prompt and simply how these characters might act).
> 
> The first is about demonstrating to myself that sexual attraction and sexual desire do not necessarily have to be connected to anything else; that they may exist independently of any emotional connection with a person, or any positive feelings for them at all, and may in fact exist alongside active hatred.
> 
> The second thing is about the value of persistence, and the fact that there are different kinds of bravery. So often on screen we see bravery as a gun, or a fist; we see success as dead bodies on the floor or the bad guys in handcuffs. But bravery doesn't always look like that in real life. Sometimes it is just about carrying on until things get better.
> 
> So, while Nathan is not able to fight the bad guys off, and while he is not able to stop them doing exactly and whatever they want to him, he keeps going, and he is still there when things change. He persisted through the night until the dawn of a new day found him, and he was able to take advantage of it when it did. And that is a kind of bravery with exactly as much value as taking the bad guys out with violence at the first sign of trouble.
> 
> -
> 
> This story is part of the LLF Comment Project, which was created with the aim of improving communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates all forms of positive feedback, including:
> 
>   * Short comments
>   * Long comments
>   * Questions
>   * Anything you'd like to see more of
>   * “<3” as extra kudos
>   * Reader-reader interaction
> 

> 
> The LLF Project also has a Comment Builder here.
> 
> This author typically replies to comments, however if for any reason you would rather not receive a reply, include #whisper in your comment and I'll leave you be:)
> 
> Comments are very welcome no matter how long ago this fic was posted. You do not need an account to comment.
> 
> Or, come chat on tumblr (http://cookiedoughmeagain.tumblr.com/) or Twitter (https://twitter.com/CookieDoughYou) I'm always happy to hear from Haven fans:)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [see the sin in your grin and the shape of your mouth](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14265363) by [fragilelittleteacup](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fragilelittleteacup/pseuds/fragilelittleteacup)




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